Virtual Modelling of Real- Driving Conditions for Early Evaluation and Validation of Vehicles Design

"The vehicle validation at the end of the development process has to guarantee the vehicle will fulfill the expected reliability, consumption, emission, safety and performances in the variety of possible use- case scenarios, ranging from city to hilly roads and autobahnsmotorways, from extremely hot to extremely cold conditions and from gentle to aggressive driving. IDIADA is a leading company in validation for real- driving conditions, conducting over 15.000.000 km per year in the five continents. However, problem-solving in the validation phase is commonly difficult and expensive. For this reason, real- driving conditions are gaining relevance in the vehicle design phase, hence, the need arises to shift these real conditions to a model basedmodel-based development process in order to perform target setting and early virtual validation for real- driving conditions. For the modelling of the different real conditions a data collection process must be carried out. The data acquisition system and specific instrumentation typically represent a high- cost activity that hinders the data collection coverage. For this purpose, IDIADA has developed the NAVIMU-20, a cost- effective, versatile, compact and accurate data acquisition system that involves navigation and inertial measurements as well as logging functionality for collectingon all the data required to generate virtual mission profiles. This paper covers the development of this solution, starting with the measurements definition, standardization of the logs format for compatibility with the post-processing system, the comparison and verification with high- performance data acquisition systems to validate and ensure the data quality, the and algorithm development for the slope calculation with post- processing. Finally, the generated mission profiles are validated to calculate powertrain demand, through correlation between calculated operative point and measured torque for sample routes. As a result of the activity, the paper shows the application of a mission profile to virtually simulate the implications in real use of a combustion and a hybrid vehicle oin the same route. This methodology aims to build a real- driving usage profile database with wide coverage of the five continents suitable for early virtual evaluation of real- driving implications in powertrain in terms of consumption, emissions, durability, driveability, cooling and thermal comfort."